Saturday Special: Too Many Books, Too Little Space

Karen Arnold via freepik.com

I've loved reading since Dick and Jane ran with Spot. I don't remember my book collection overtaking my space when I was a kid, but then again, when I was in middle school, we moved to a house with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, giving me plenty of space for my Nancy Drew collection -- and then some.

In my lifetime, I've worked in three different bookstores, and I trace the origins of my "too many books, too little space" conundrum back to those jobs, which fed my inner book collector -- sometimes at the expense of my bank account.

Our house is a Cape Cod, so when I wanted to find resources about organizing books, I was excited to find posts on the Apartment Therapy site, where they specialize in fun ideas for small spaces. And, in a decision that matches my bookstore behavior, I couldn't decide, so I'm posting both.

The first is an article (with great pictures) that explores various ways to organize books, depending on your style (I had to grab that one!); the second, geared to a weekend project approach has videos. Both provide ideas and maybe even a little motivation for taking control of book overrun.

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While I'll be contributing to book overrun this weekend as I put the finishing touches on my novel, I'm looking forward to putting some of those ideas to work this winter, when I have more time to tackle my list of organizing to-dos.

Happy organizing! And, if you manage to make it through the process without getting sucked into a book you forgot you had, you're stronger than I am.

Saturday Special: 5 Home Organization Projects to Tackle Before Summer is Over

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It's mid-September and today's Days to Summer countdown tells me there are 4 days left in the summer of 2015. Though I'm sorry to say good-bye to many aspects of summer, I'm not a big fan of hot weather, so I'm not entirely sad about these waning days.

Just as each of us has our favorite seasons (mine is fall), some organization projects lend themselves more to some seasons than others. Toward that end, Organized Living has come up with some seasonal suggestions, in 5 Home Organization Projects to Tackle in Really Hot Weather. Many of these would also work on rainy days...or any other day where venturing outside seems less-than-desirable.  

What will you organize today?

Saturday Special: Thinking Outside the (Ikea) Box

One of my favorites in this piece.
Buzzfeed.com

I've never been to an Ikea store. Sad, really, since I grew up not far from a number of them. And, after scrolling through Buzzfeed's 37 Clever Ways to Organize Your Entire Life with Ikea, I'm thinking I might have to plan a trip. The ideas here are clever (as promised), creative and suited to a wide range of styles.

It just goes to show you: When you combine designated uses of storage items with all of the possible non-standard uses, the possibilities are endless.

Logical Homes: Part Two

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When I taught the concept of logical homes to my elementary school students, I asked them to imagine they'd just returned from a trip to a warehouse store, like Costco, BJ's or Sam's Club. As they unloaded everything they (or their parents) had purchased, they managed to find homes for everything except a large multi-pack of toilet paper. Since it was too big to stash anywhere in its wrapped state, they'd need to open it up and put away individual rolls. After storing some of the rolls in the bathroom, and putting most of the rest in a nearby closet, they still had several rolls that needed to be put somewhere. Desperate, they returned to the kitchen, opened the oven door, and, finding the oven empty, decided to stash the remaining rolls of toilet paper in the oven.

Needless to say, even ten-year-olds recognized the foolishness of this decision.

While I doubt that any of you routinely use your oven as storage for toilet paper, I suspect that there's at least one item in your house that's stored in an out-of-the-way place simply because that's where there was room. If you're an I know I put it somewhere person, chances are that's the rule, rather than the exception.

Which brings me back to where we left off last week: logical homes. As always, your personal and organizational styles should set the parameters. A home is not logical if it doesn't work for your styles, and your logical homes might not be logical to someone else (just ask my husband). While we want to move away from actual cramming and jamming and dropping and running, we need to honor those tendencies as we select permanent homes for our things -- especially those we use on a daily basis.

With that in mind, here's an expansion on the bullet points from last week's post.

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• Store things that are used every day in places that are easy to access. "Easy" should be defined by the style(s) of the person who most often uses the item. My husband loves filing cabinets, so his papers are stored there. This works for his I know I put it somewhere style because since nearly all of his papers end up in the file cabinet (somewhere), he needs to look in only one place when he's looking for papers.                                               Notice that I said his papers. As an I need to see it/drop and run person, I see little functional difference between a file cabinet and a trash can -- both put my papers out of sight, rendering bothcontainers useless as storage spaces (unless I really intend to throw the papers away, which renders the storage issue moot). Unless I create a more visual filing system for my  frequently used papers, they end up in a pile on my desk (or the dining room table), where I can see them, and remember to take care of them. For me, a filing cabinet is a logical home for papers I need to reference, but not for those I use regularly.

• Choose a storage solution (container and location) that makes it as easy to put things away as it is to put them down. The more difficult it is to put something away, the less likely it is that it’ll end up where it belongs. How often have you set something aside to put away "later" because it's too complicated or time consuming to put it where it "belongs"? That's a sure sign that the place where it's currently stored might not be the right home for it.

• Store things where you use them...or drop them...or naturally put them. When you get the mail each day, where do you put it down? Your mail storage should be located as close as possible to that spot. Frequently used items get prime real estate -- that's why the toothpaste goes in the bathroom near the toothbrushes, but the out-of-season linens go on the top shelf of the hall closet. The less often you use something, the more out-of-the-way it can be stored. (There's a reason we store seasonal items in the attic and the garage, often on high shelves). This isn't laziness -- it's maintenance. The easier it is to put something away, the more likely it is that things will be put where they belong. Simply changing the arrangement of the bins in my bathroom closet solved the bathroom counter clutter problem at my house, but to make that happen, I had to think about who was using the system. I liked it the way it was -- but not so much that it was worth picking up after an able-bodied teenager. Remember that the goal is to establish a system that's not only easy to use, but easy to maintain.

• Store similar items together: As with my husband's filing cabinet, if all of the similar items are stored together, you only need to look in one place when you need to find anything in that category. If you need multiples of an item (e.g. a stapler), consider buying duplicates or storing them with other related items in a mobile container (such as a basket with a handle) so that they're easily moved from location to location and you don't waste storage space by storing the same item in multiple locations. Again, style is key. I am so guilty of office supplies in multiple locations in the house, but that has more to do with my office supply obsession than my organization plan....an entirely different blog post.  

So what do we do when the necessary permanent storage space (e.g. closet) isn't working? More on that next week.

Obstacle Course

I set aside time over the past two weekends to tackle the clutter in my office. In the past year and a half, I've moved the remnants of a work office (in which I spent almost 20 years) to home. I've made more than one set of revisions on a book due out this month. I took on a position as an adjunct professor. The result? A space that had become the dumping ground for mountains of paper. Some of it simply needed to be put away, some thrown away, and the rest needed to find a home. Since the beginning of a new year was also down time between semesters, it seemed like a good time to get to work.

After successfully attacking first the counter, then my desk, I ended up with two marvelously clear spaces in my office. Anything that remains on either of those surfaces is there for a reason and/or serves a purpose. What I'm left with is several small boxes of things that need to be sorted through -- homeless items and things I don't know what to do with -- along with a Thirty-One bin attractively (and temporarily) containing the papers and stuff I discovered when I cleared the counter. Intimidating as it sounds, everything that remains is easy to can chip away at, so it feels approachable, especially given the new, vast expanses of clear space in my office. I'd forgotten how motivating a clear work space can be.

I was so proud of my work that I invited my daughter to check it out when she came home from her basketball game last Saturday. "Wow," she said. "Looks good, Mom. Now if only we could get into the room."

Wow. She was right. I mean, I knew the aforementioned small boxes were stacked precariously in one spot but I'd completely overlooked the things I'd set on the step between the office and the living room.

Maybe it's the fact that I just finished teaching a psych class, but I had to wonder if it was Freudian. I'd set one box on the step as a visual reminder that it needed to go somewhere else, but when combined with the organizing materials (hanging file folders and now-empty accordion folders) I'd stashed on the other side of the step -- temporarily, of course -- only a footstep's worth of space remained on the step down from the living room to the office.

Did I want to keep my family out of my work space? Of course I did. But had I gone so far as to create a barrier that would discourage them from entering?

Hmm.

My husband and I just had a talk last week about how hard it is to work with constant interruptions, a work-from-home liability I'd all but forgotten about until I foolishly thought I might get something accomplished over Christmas break. We'd even looked for a portable folding screen that I could "close" when I was working on a project that required sustained attention.

In the absence of a door, had I created a physical barrier that made it more difficult for people to actually enter the room to interrupt me?

It appears I had.

While I maintain that my intentions were innocent, I must also admit that I bookmarked several sites that had folding screens I liked. And, I'm not at all shy about admitting that I get quite cranky when my train of thought is interrupted for no apparent reason (e.g. "Whatcha doing?").

That said, I have now been embarrassed into removing said items from the step.

But I have no intention of halting the search for a folding screen.